Why "consciousness" means what it does.

“Consciousness” seems to be a polysemic, ambiguous, term. Because of this, theorists have sought to distinguish the different kinds of phenomena that “consciousness” denotes, leading to a proliferation of terms for different kinds of consciousness. However, some philosophers—univocalists about consciousness—argue that “consciousness” is not polysemic or ambiguous. By drawing upon the history of philosophy and psychology, and some resources from semantic theory, univocalism about consciousness is shown to be implausible. This finding is important, for if we accept the univocalist account then we are less likely to subject our thought and talk about the mind to the kind of critical analysis that it needs. The exploration of the semantics of “consciousness” offered here, by way of contrast, clarifies and fine-tunes our thought and talk about consciousness and conscious mentality and explains why “consciousness” means what it does, and why it means a number of different, but related, things

Permissive consent:a robust reason-changing account

There is an ongoing debate about the “ontology” of consent. Some argue that it is a mental act, some that it is a “hybrid” of a mental act plus behaviour that signifies that act; others argue that consent is a performative, akin to promising or commanding. Here it is argued that all these views are mistaken—though some more so than others. We begin with the question whether a normatively efficacious act of consent can be completed in the mind alone. Standard objections to this “mentalist” account of consent can be rebutted. Here we identify a much deeper problem for mentalism. Normatively transformative acts of consent change others’ reasons for acting in a distinctive—“robust”—way. Robust reason-changing involves acts aimed at fulfilling a distinctive kind of reflexive and recognition-directed intention. Such acts cannot be coherently performed in the mind alone. Consent is not a mental act, but nor is it the signification of such an act. Acts of consent cannot be “completed” in the mind, and it is a mistake to view consent behaviour as making known a completed act of consent. The robust reason-changing account of consent developed here shares something with the performative theory, but is not saddled with a label whose home is philosophy of language. Certain kinds of performative utterance may change reasons robustly, but not all robust reason-changing involves or requires acts of speech, and consent can be effected by a wide range of behavioural acts

The electron-phonon processes of the nitrogen-vacancy center in diamond

Applications of negatively charged nitrogen-vacancy center in diamond exploit the center's unique optical and spin properties, which at ambient temperature, are predominately governed by electron-phonon interactions. Here, we investigate these interactions at ambient and elevated temperatures by observing the motional narrowing of the center's excited state spin resonances. We determine that the center's Jahn-Teller dynamics are much slower than currently believed and identify the vital role of symmetric phonon modes. Our results have pronounced implications for center's diverse applications (including quantum technology) and for understanding its fundamental properties.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure

Solid state coherent transient measurements using hard optical pulses

An isolated and spectrally narrow absorptive feature is prepared via a novel spectral hole burning process in an inhomogeneously broadened optical transition in Eu3+:Y2SiO5. With the narrow feature it is shown that it is feasible to apply complex optical pulse sequences analogous to rf pulse sequences used extensively in NMR

What Worked, What Did Not: University Instruction during a Pandemic

In this report, we discuss the experience of both lecturing and teaching laboratory classes during a pandemic at the University of Mississippi (UM). UM is a relatively rural university with approximately 20 000 students. The instructional approaches that we attempted would be significantly more difficult to implement at universities with larger class sizes, geographically more restricted with regard to climate, or more urban with confined space, yet we observed many failures, even at a rural, spacious campus. Here, we note the various models of instruction that—in our case—could be separated into three approaches: in-person (i.e., traditional face-to-face instruction), online only, and a hybrid model with some component of the two (1). We discuss our experiences of what went right and what went wrong with each approach. Given that similar approaches have been undertaken around the globe, we use this report to relate what we observed as both effective and noneffective for our style of university, with special emphasis on physical biochemical laboratory training of students

Time-averaging within the excited state of the nitrogen-vacancy centre in diamond

The emission intensity of diamond samples containing negatively charged nitrogen-vacancy centres are measured as a function of magnetic field along the 111 direction for various temperatures. At low temperatures the responses are sample and stress dependent and can be modelled in terms of the previous understanding of the 3E excited state fine structure which is strain dependent. At room temperature the responses are largely sample and stress independent, and modelling involves invoking a strain independent excited state with a single zero field spin-level splitting of 1.42 GHz. The change in behaviour is attributed to a temperature dependent averaging process over the components of the excited state orbital doublet. It decouples orbit and spin and at high temperature the spin levels become independent of any orbit splitting. One significant implication of this averaging is that it simplifies the development of room temperature applications